Natural Interactions in the Book as Art and Making Knowledge

Coloring in Natural History Books

What more could colors add to black and white images of nature besides a brighter appearance? For many early modern natural historians, the answer was not much. They argued that coloring was antithetical to the practice of natural history because it had individualized images of plants to an extent that it hindered proper identification of them. In addition, they contended that plants and their colors changed seasonally, and as such, colors could never capture the general essence of a specimen. Despite the firm opposition to applying colors, for other naturalists, coloring was a practice integral to the proper depiction of nature. Leonhart Fuchs regarded colors as one of the primary morphological traits of plants necessary for identifying and understanding specimens. German-born naturalist and artist Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) argued that colors could supply details to the images of plants that words simply failed to do so.

Coloring also offered amateur enthusiasts and collectors a practice through which to understand and learn about nature. Coloring allowed them to put their physical observation of nature into direct practice, and experiment with the possibilities provided both by nature and colors. Hand-colored copies of natural history books showcase the variety and diversity found in nature through the eyes of countless individuals. Copies of books and albums that were colored by professional artists were also useful aids to imagining a more complete realm of the natural world. Colors–whether privately applied or professionally provided–allowed individuals that could not travel extensively a tactile inquiry of nature from the comfort of their homes. Coloring helped them transform from passive receivers of knowledge into active observers of natural phenomena.

Leonhart Fuchs (German, 1501-1566)
Primi de stirpium historia commentariorum tomi uiuae imagines, in exiguam angustioremq́[ue] formam contractae, ac q̀uam fieri potest artificiosissimè expressae, ut quicunq[ue] rei herbariae radicitus cognoscendae desidero tenentur, eas uel deambulantes uel peregrinantes in finu cōmodius gestare, adq́[ue] natiuas herbas conferre queant. Additus est index, qui stirpium nomenclaturas continet ...Basel, 1545
Harvey Cushing / John Hay Whitney Medical Library, Yale University

Hand-colored chamomile specimens in the 1545 pocket copy of Fuchs’ natural history

Colors brought a personal touch to  copies of natural history books. This copy of Leonhart Fuchs’ De Historia Stirpium (“The History of Plants”) belongs to a pictorial edition that contains hundreds of illustrations but not the heavy text load of the original. An unknown hand colored about a dozen images either partially or completely. The unfinished colorings suggest that they were not applied professionally. Instead, the color might have been added by the owner of the book as a pastime, who was possibly the same individual that had written notes at the beginning of the book. The amateur colorist could have applied color for several reasons. First, he or she might have added color in direct response to Fuchs’ instructions in the original natural history text. Fuchs encouraged his readers to observe nature and color the plants accordingly, for only then could they define the identities of plants. The user acted like a naturalist: he or she performed first-hand study of nature, tested Fuchs’ theory about the importance of color to identification, and put both observation and theory into direct practice. Second, it is possible that the user acted on his or her own accord, and colored certain specimens based on personal preference. It seems that the user showed interest only in specific plants, and used color to mark those very specimens, such as the chamomile. In either scenario, color enabled both the implementation of individual observations about nature and experimentation with natural history’s broader research questions.

Click the arrows below to view several hand-colored illustrations in different states of coloring from the 1545 pocket copy of Fuchs’ natural history.